One of the rhetorical trademarks of President Trump’s administration is the policy of dishing it out but declining to take it. This is, after all, the man who called his political rivals “lil” and “nasty,” mocked a disabled reporter on the campaign stump and compared the FBI to Nazis, but often complains that he is being treated unfairly. Reports surfaced this weekend that Trump would forgo a state trip to the U.K. because he didn’t want to face large-scale public protests.
The uncomfortable bath of public response has begun to chafe his family. Three days after her brother, Eric, said on Fox News’s “Hannity” that Democrats who criticized his father were “not even people,” first daughter Ivanka Trump appeared on “Fox & Friends” and told the hosts how the whole First Family thing was going for her.
“There’s a level of viciousness that I was not expecting,” she said. “I was not expecting the intensity of this experience.”
“Some of the distractions and some of the ferocity, I was a little blindsided by on a personal level,” she continued.
Ivanka didn’t cite specific viciousness, distractions or ferocity, or indicate whether they were in response to her father’s performance, her own, the Trump family’s, or all three. But as first daughter, Ivanka has not displayed a precise ear for tone: her attempt to brand herself as the White House’s voice for modern working women has not been well received in the face of her father’s health-care bill (which would drop 23 million people from health insurance) and concern that the administration will roll back reproductive rights. It was recently reported that the Chinese factories which produce Ivanka Trump-branded clothing and shoes pay their workers the equivalent of $1 a week. And the night the president’s Muslim ban went into effect, she posted a selfie in a silver gown while dozens of travelers were detained at airports.
Twitter was quick to point out the contradictions between Ivanka’s complaints and her father’s behavior.
Her father said Ben Carson was a psychopath and Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK and she wasn’t expecting viciousness. She’s a filthy liar. https://t.co/8srNXVNTyA
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) June 12, 2017
Ivanka Trump, who apparently hasn’t met her father, is shocked people in DC are “vicious” https://t.co/6pSq8UT93f pic.twitter.com/clVIFWFP0o
— Fusion (@Fusion) June 12, 2017
Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law once hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and mailed the tape to his sister https://t.co/m0PoMAHKXh
— Mark Berman (@markberman) June 12, 2017
“There is a level of viciousness that I was not expecting” – Ivanka Trump pic.twitter.com/Nrtt9Nbn3s
— shauna (@goldengateblond) June 12, 2017
IVANKA TRUMP: There’s a level of viciousness in Washington I did not expect. pic.twitter.com/7kRsGAtisn
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) June 12, 2017
Level of Viciousness? We apologize, Ivanka Trump. pic.twitter.com/rJogqBvJ9F
— Nathaniel Spuewell (@natespuewell) June 12, 2017
Ivanka Trump: I was not expecting the viciousness in DC.
Eric Trump: Democrats are not even people.
— Michael Blackman (@MBlackman37) June 12, 2017
Ivanka Trump says “viciousness” toward her father “blindsided” her https://t.co/cuQL48rBOA pic.twitter.com/MdN4AcQvY3
— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) June 12, 2017
It’s not the first time this month that Trump has attempted to toe both sides of the family line and been burned. In early June, she tweeted support for LGBT Pride Month, despite the fact that her father had declined to issue a formal proclamation (and ended up speaking at an anti-LGBT conference last week). The Twittersphere did not like that one either.
Ivanka’s “Fox & Friends” appearance comes a few weeks after reports that she and her husband, Jared Kushner, would be re-evaluating every six months whether to stay in Washington or return to New York City.
